


I'm Waking Up

by squidnie



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Basically I just wanted to write Bellarke and zombies, Bellarke, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Typical Zombie Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2018-07-25 17:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7541998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squidnie/pseuds/squidnie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's strategy and planning. He's split-second decisions and adrenaline. In this world, they will learn that they're better together.</p><p>Or... the Zombie Apocalypse AU that no one asked for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ash and Dust

**Author's Note:**

> Work title and chapter titles are all taken from the song Radioactive by Imagine Dragons.

The floor of the house is eerily clean. It's dustless, unlike every other abandoned house Clarke has broken into, and that's what clues her into the fact that this one actually has human residents.

She grips her pistol in both hands, aiming it toward the ground with the safety clicked off. It's solely a precaution. She's not going to be the first to shoot, but she's met her fair share of weirdos since the outbreak and she's not above shooting a person in the leg to save her own skin.

Clarke makes her way into the house. It's a small building, one floor. She had stepped into the kitchen through the back door. The linoleum was faded and peeling but clean, the sliver of sunlight coming through the open door illuminating a pantry. And food. Real, canned food -

"Are you going to close the door, or do you want every walker within hearing distance to join us?"

The voice behind Clarke startles her. She turns and raises her gun, finding one pointed right back at her. She follows the line of his arm, dark-skinned, veins prominent in his forearm, up to a broad chest in a dirty t-shirt and finally to his face. He looks young, maybe a few years older than Clarke's 21 years. There is a mess of freckles along his nose and cheekbones. His lips are turned down into a scowl and his dark eyes are hard, untrusting.

Clarke reaches behind her to shut the door without taking her eyes off the man. His harsh gaze doesn't waver, and neither does the gun aimed at her forehead. Suddenly, she just feels really tired.

"You're not weird, are you?" She asks, her voice sounding exasperated even to her own ears. The man stares at her. "Not a collector? Opportunistic murderer? Creeper in general?"

One side of his mouth twitches. "Just trying to stay alive, Princess," he says, "Like everyone else."

"Good." Clarke lowers her gun, flips the safety on. She sees the tension ease out of the man's shoulders. "I'm Clarke. And I'd appreciate it if I could stay here tonight. I've been out in that damn forest for weeks."

There's hesitation in the man's expression. He must decided Clarke isn't a threat, though, because he finally puts his gun away and introduces himself. "Bellamy. My sister is in the other room."

Clarke follows Bellamy into the next room. It's a small living room with dark furniture and paint. It would be cozy if not for the arsenal lining the wall. Guns and knives and what look like explosive devices entirely line one wall. Against the other wall a young, dark-haired girl sits cross-legged on an old couch. Bellamy takes the spot next to the girl. Clarke is left to stand awkwardly in the middle.

"You're the first person we've seen in months," the girl says. Her eyes are wide. Clarke feels itchy under her gaze, as if the girl's judgement is actually scratching at her exposed skin.

"I wish I could say the same," is what she replies with. The girl looks at Bellamy, then back at Clarke.

"Where are you headed?"

"East," Clarke says automatically. "They have a cure."

Bellamy snorts. Clarke snaps her eyes to him. "What?"

"Bullshit," he says simply, leaning back against the couch with one arm protectively around his sister's shoulders.

Clarke bristles. She puts a hand on her hip, about to challenge him, but he returns his attention to the other girl.

"Why don't you go to bed, O? We'll check the traps in the morning." The girl gives Bellamy an eye roll, but gets up off the couch with no other complaints. She stops in front of Clarke on her way out of the room. Clarke's suddenly struck by her beauty, which is both similar and different than Bellamy's. The girl has the same jaw and the same determined look in her eyes, but her skin is pale and free of freckles. She's sharp and delicate at once and Clarke might be jealous of her if Clarke were worried about things such as her appearance in the middle of the apocalypse.

"Octavia," the girl says, holding out a hand. Clarke shakes it, a smile just pulling at her lips when Octavia continues, "please don't kill my brother tonight."

\---

Clarke doesn't kill Bellamy.

He invites her to sleep on the couch while he keeps watch, and she's not too prideful to take him up on the offer. So she makes herself comfortable on the small couch, her sleeping bag draped over her, and promptly passes out.

She wakes only a few hours later, but it's still the best night of sleep she's gotten in a long time. Her eyes adjust after a moment to find Bellamy sitting by the window, watching the world through a crack in the wooden boards. A rifle is sitting on his lap. He's caressing the barrel of the gun like it's an animal that he's trying to soothe. A book is lying abandoned on the ground by his feet.

"Want to switch?" Clarke's voice cracks with sleep. Bellamy looks over his shoulder, his expression making it clear that he wasn't expecting her to wake up any time soon.

"What?"

Clarke almost laughs at his confusion. "I said, do you want to switch? I can keep watch for a few hours if you want to sleep."

To her surprise, Bellamy stands up. Clarke watches him cross the room to the other couch and stretch across it. "Wake me up if you see anything, you hear me?" Clarke rolls her eyes at the order but moves to the empty position by the window.

"I hope you're friendlier once you've gotten some sleep," she comments offhandedly. Bellamy snorts, and that's the end of it. Clarke sets her pistol in her lap and looks out the window, settling in for zombie duty.

It's maybe an hour later that he speaks up. "There's no cure, you know." His tone is almost conversational, as if he had told her the weather forecast.

Clarke looks away from the window to the couch, where Bellamy is sitting upright, legs stretched out in front of him and arms folded across his chest. "Excuse me?"

Bellamy shrugs. "Earlier, you said you were going east toward the cure. But there is no cure."

"And how do you know that?" Clarke is challenging, short and unfriendly, but Bellamy doesn't seem bothered.

He looks at her for a long moment before replying. "Because if there was a cure, I wouldn't have had to shoot my mother in the head when she got bit."

The world rocks, and Clarke suddenly feels like she's going to be sick. The way he said it, so calm and matter-of-fact makes her simultaneously scared of the man and sympathetic. She wants to hug him and get away from him. She wants to ask him to shut up and she wants to ask him what happened.

So she just looks at him for another moment before returning her gaze to the window.

"There's a cure," Clarke says quietly. "There has to be."

Bellamy doesn't argue this time.

\---

Clarke gets a few more hours of sleep that night. When she wakes up again the room is empty, but she can hear low murmuring in the next room. She picks out Bellamy 's and Octavia's voices and through she can't understand what they're saying, she tries to eavesdrop as she packs her sleeping bag. Just as she's slinging her backpack over her shoulders and putting her shoes on, the two siblings enter the room. Octavia's first, head held high and arms folded as she stands across from Clarke. Bellamy's next. He seems wary, casting Octavia a defeated glance before looking at Clarke.

Clarke thinks that what he has to say might be physically painful for him, judging by his scowl and the way his hands fist around nothing. So she isn't expecting what he says when he does speak.

"Do you want to stay?"


	2. This Is It (The Apocalypse)

Clarke stays.

She's almost ashamed of how fast she agrees to it. She knows that she needs to keep going. She doesn’t have time to stay in one place. She has to get to Virginia, to the cure. That's what she's been working toward for four months. The offer to stay with the Blake's is just too good to pass up, though. They have a house. It's small and old and dingy, but it's still a house. It has a roof and furniture and it has been lived in. It gives Clarke a sense of normality.

She goes out that morning with Octavia and Bellamy to check their traps. She watches as the two of them strap on more guns and knives than is practical. Clarke's thumb brushes over her own gun. Her knife sits securely in her boot. She feels underdressed.

Outside of the house, Bellamy is all business. Clarke has never seen anything like it. She's been around enough people since the outbreak to know the types. There's the hunter; the one who goes looking for zombies with the intent to off every single one of them. There are the hiders; those that stay holed up in one place until they're forced to leave. There are nomads like Clarke, and there are a wide variety of creeps.

Bellamy doesn't fit into any category. The walk from the house to their traps has shown Clarke that much. Bellamy isn't searching for the undead, he's simply searching for rabbits that had the misfortune to be caught up in his snare. He isn't hiding from the zombies, though, either. His weapons make that obvious enough.

Clarke realizes that Bellamy is, first and foremost, Octavia's brother.

She can see it in the way he hovers over her as she untangles a rabbit's foot from a trap. Octavia doesn't seem to mind. Clarke thinks she's probably used to it.

"Watch the end of that, O. Don't cut yourself."

"I _know,_ Bell," Octavia says. Bellamy paces, his hand flexing on his gun. He pretends not to watch Octavia for all of two seconds before he’s hanging over her shoulder again.

It's an interesting dynamic to watch. Clarke always wondered what it would be like to have a sibling, and watching the Blake's relationship makes her once again want something that she doesn't have. She wants a protective big brother. Maybe she wants a little sister that rolls her eyes, but smiles when she thinks no one else is looking.

To Clarke, though, Bellamy's short and commanding. He snaps at her multiple times to stop walking so loudly even though she's hardly making any noise. He has no patience as she climbs over fallen tree trunks or looks around at a sudden noise.

"Stopping and looking for the walker isn't the smartest idea," he says. "Hear a sound, move away from it. Avoid a fight. Save bullets."

"I'm aware of the theory," Clarke says sarcastically. Still, she'd rather not be surprised by a sudden zombie that popped up because she didn't walk away fast enough. She already knew that it was useless to argue with Bellamy, though, so she didn't try.

She finds herself wondering what Bellamy was like before the outbreak. Was he always this impatient? Did Octavia grow up under his protection, or is that something that came with the new sickness and broken world around them?

Clarke’s guess is that it’s just the way that Bellamy has always been. In her experience, the outbreak didn’t change people. It just enhanced traits that were already there. Her mom was tenser, more secretive, and harder to live with before Clarke finally lost contact with her. Wells became more reckless. Lexa’s hero complex worsened until it destroyed her. And Clarke herself had pulled away from everyone after she lost Lexa, tucked into herself and stayed away from other people.

Until now. Because honestly, she’s lonely. She’s sick of running into random bands of survivors that are unwilling to take in stragglers. She’s tired of wandering the woods alone, killing zombies alone, sleeping for short periods of time because she’s afraid that if she lets herself have a night she won’t ever wake up.

Bellamy might be hard to deal with, but he’s willing to let Clarke try, and she’s grateful for it. Plus, Octavia makes up for her brother’s surly mood. The girl is energetic and full of attitude, and Clarke finds herself smiling and laughing more than she has in weeks. Octavia is also incredibly strong and intelligent. She doesn’t flinch when the three of them come across a long-dead walker. Clarke both admires it and feels sad for the sixteen-year-old girl that is so used to death and decay that it doesn’t even bother her when she sees it.

\---

“Get in,” Bellamy says gruffly, roughly tugging on Clarke’s arm. She stumbles into the kitchen and Bellamy slams the door shut, flipping the locks and shoving a heavy wooden crate into place in front of the door.

“Why don’t you just kill them?” Clarke asks, looking through a crack in the boarded up window over the kitchen sink. Three walkers amble toward the house, drawn in by the smell of the skinned rabbits hanging from Octavia’s hands.

Bellamy shoots her a look before striding out of the room. “O. Come on.” Octavia follows her brother soundlessly. Clarke watches the walkers launch themselves at the barricaded door for another minute before joining Bellamy and Octavia in the living room.

They’re sitting in front of the fireplace roasting the rabbits. Bellamy and Octavia sit close together, shoulders touching, their low murmurs not loud enough to block out the moans and thuds from the walkers just outside their walls. Clarke doesn’t mention killing them again – it’s obviously a sore subject. The sounds give her the chills, though, so she sits on the couch under her sleeping bag and waits for dinner.

“Here,” Bellamy says a few minutes later, holding a chunk of meat out to her. She accepts it with a nod of thanks and Bellamy returns to his spot next to Octavia. They eat in silence. The rabbit is actually pretty good. Clarke hasn’t had real meat in months, having stuck to dried out rations and scavenged food from looted stores.

After dinner, Bellamy and Octavia sit by the fire until it burns itself out. That night Octavia sleeps on the couch and Bellamy splits his watch shift with Clarke again.

“Do they ever give up and go away?” Clarke asks when the zombie noises prove too be much for her in the quiet inside the house. Even though he hasn’t spoken in hours, she knows that Bellamy is awake.

“They’ll find something else to chase after or they’ll starve to death,” he says quietly from the opposite side of the room.

“I didn’t know they could starve,” Clarke comments. A walker throws itself at her window and she cringes at the crunch of it.

“It takes a long time,” Bellamy says. “We were holed up in here for two weeks waiting for it to happen once.”

Clarke doesn’t respond after that. It makes her sick, the idea of zombies dying because they don’t eat. It makes her feel like they’re real, like they’re human, and that makes the whole damn situation too hard to handle. The walkers are just that – dead people walking, and Clarke has to believe that. Until she knows if there is a cure or not, she can’t stay in that in-between belief system. It’ll destroy her.

\---

The routine becomes familiar almost too quickly. They leave the house when they can, checking traps and bringing home fresh food. Bellamy cooks the food and dries the meat in order to store it up for when they might need it. Clarke feels bad that she can’t help with the preparation, but Octavia quickly waves her worries away.

“We don’t mind sharing,” she tells Clarke, “it’s a small price to pay for decent company.”

Clarke has been there for about two weeks the first time they come across a walker in the woods.

It crashes out of thick bushes, roaring as it lunges for Octavia. Bellamy’s on it in an instant, shoving the walker off Octavia at the same time that he pushes his sister in the opposite direction. He fires his gun and the shot misses its mark, shooting straight through the walker’s arm. The zombie loses its balance and Bellamy takes that chance to check on Octavia. He turns his back, yelling at Octavia to leave, and the walker lunges again.

Clarke throws her knife and it hits its bulls eye. The walker stumbles and falls. Dead. Clarke retrieves her knife, cleans it off on the grass, and slips it back into her boot.

Octavia stares at Clarke with undisguised awe. Bellamy’s expression is harder to figure out. His face is softer than she’s seen it directed at anyone but Octavia, his eyebrows scrunched and his mouth relaxed. He won’t take his eyes off Clarke, even as she stares right back at him.

“Anyway. Should we go back?” Clarke asks, awkward.

\---

“We can’t stay here, you know,” Clarke says one night a few weeks after she stumbled upon the Blake siblings.

Bellamy’s sitting at the window with his gun again. He doesn’t look at her. “Why not?”

“Because you’ll run out of things eventually. Food, ammunition. Sanity.” Bellamy looks over his shoulder at her, unimpressed.

“We’ve been okay this long, Princess.”

“It’s only been a few months. Bellamy, when you–”

He cuts her off, his expression hardened. “You don’t have to stay. You are free to leave whenever you want. But you don’t get to show up and demand that O and I leave with you.”

“I’m not demanding anything,” Clarke says, annoyed at the accusation. “I’m just trying to get you to see reason. What’s keeping you here, anyway?” She means it as a rhetorical question, something to make Bellamy realize that the answer is ‘nothing,’ but it makes him grimace anyway. “I’m just saying,” she continues quietly, “that maybe you should consider it. Three is better than one. And I don’t hate being around you two. And you guys don’t hate being around me.”

Bellamy turns his head to look at her. “I never said I liked you, though, did I?”


	3. I Feel It in My Bones

"We'll go with you," Bellamy tells Clarke three nights later. They're sitting at the window together. It's the first thing either of them have said since Octavia went to her room.

"What?"

He gives her a look that says he might think she's just a little but stupid. "We'll go with you. To Virginia. Octavia and I."

"But you said-"

He cuts her off with a sharp look, clearly annoyed by the arguing. "I talked to Octavia and she convinced me that I was being a stubborn ass. So if you still want to go, we'll go with you."

"I want to go."

"It's a party of three, then."

\---

They plan to leave in two days. The first day is spent checking traps and dividing up supplies into three backpacks. Bellamy argues with Octavia about how much she can carry while she snaps at him about being old and hurting his back.

"I'm only twenty-four, O," he replies distractedly, methodically sorting through ammunition.

"That's basically geriatric," she replies as she flings a beanie at him. He catches it, unimpressed, and sets it on his small pile of clothes.

"Get off my damn lawn," he mutters under his breath and Octavia cracks up.

The second day is for double and triple-checking to make sure they have everything they need. Enough food and water to last until they can get more, clothes, sleeping bags, weapons, and a few personal items each. Clarke has pictures of her old life, Octavia has a diary and a tattered stuffed butterfly.

Clarke doesn't see what Bellamy chose to take with him until that night. She's keeping watch while he sorts and resorts his bag, clearly anxious. She turns her attention to him and sees a small box and a baby onesie that weren't there when they were packing earlier.

"What is that?" The words fall out of her mouth before Clarke can stop them. Bellamy's head snaps toward her and he snatches up the two items, his big hands shielding them from view.

"Nothing." His voice is gruff and guarded. He stuffs the items into his bag roughly, though Clarke sees him carefully place them in another pocket not even a minute later.

\---

Clarke wakes to a soft noise. It startles her with it unfamiliarity until she realizes what it is. Bellamy's in front of the fireplace, dying embers illuminating the line of his jaw. There's a shine on his cheeks. His chest is wracking with harsh breaths that Clarke knows he's trying to contain in order to keep quiet.

Clarke watches him silently for a long time, afraid to interrupt such a personal moment. When Bellamy doesn’t calm down, though, she stands and makes her way over to him in the dark. She sits next to him wordlessly and he flinches in surprise, but otherwise doesn't protest her closeness.

"I thought you were asleep," he says, and Clarke feels a pang in her heart that she hadn't expected at his quietly embarrassed tone.

"It's hard for me to sleep for a long time," she says, honesty coming surprisingly easy. "Something always wakes me up." If Bellamy hadn't woken her, she thinks, a nightmare would have soon enough. She doesn’t tell him that, though, because he obviously has his own issues.

Bellamy nods, staring at the last bit of light in the fireplace. It's another long moment before he speaks.

"It's my mother's ring."

"Hmm?"

Bellamy glances at Clarke then looks away quickly. "In the box. My mother had a ring that she always wore. It wasn't a wedding ring or anything, but it was important to her." Clarke nods, not sure what to say or why he was even telling her about the ring. "And Octavia's first onesie. It was the only thing she wore until she grew out of it."

"She wore _one_ onesie?" Clarke knew how messy babies were. She knew how much clothes they went through in one day alone when they were that young.

Bellamy just nods. Clarke stares at him but doesn't press further. She's never seen him this open, this trusting of her, and she doesn't want to break the moment.

He continues after a few silent minutes, his eyes trained on the now-dark fireplace. "Mom was... different. She was paranoid. It was the drugs originally, I think, but she never got over it even when she quit."

Clarke looks at him then. He frowns. "She hated the city. She ran away with me when I was young. Probably five or six. I can remember it. We came here, to the middle of the woods, where we'd be safe." He laughs. It's a short, bitter sound that Clarke finds discomforting.

"She'd leave for days at a time, though,” Bellamy continues. "She'd come back high. I don't know how she even made it back every time. But she did, and I'd take care of her while she came down from whatever she'd been shot up with. Then we'd have a few good days. Then she'd leave.

"She got pregnant when I was seven years old. I knew something was up, because she wasn't high anymore. And she didn't leave me for so long. She was fucking hard to deal with, though. I hated her for it." His voice catches then smooths out again almost immediately.

"Octavia was born in the middle of the night, right here. Mom was squatting by the couch naked and sweaty and silent. I thought she was dying." He scrubs at his face with a hand as if trying to erase the memory. "Octavia didn't even cry. Mom handed her to me, just a little messy person, and told me to make sure she stayed quiet. My sister, my responsibility."

Clarke's completely transfixed, her mind trying to process the information all at once. Bellamy's story is horrifying in more ways than one, but she can't help but be touched that he's telling her. His guard is crumbled right now, she knows, and she almost feels guilty for keeping her own secrets when he’s being so open with her.

She places a hand on his. His eyes drop to their hands, then slowly raise to meet hers.

Then he looks away. "She said no one could know about Octavia. So she got one onesie."

Clarke grabs at what is probably the safest facet of the story. "If you lived out here, how did you get all the…” she searches for the right word. Food, boards for the windows, guns… “Supplies?”

“Once Octavia was old enough to hold her head up, my mom and I started taking turns going into the city for whatever we needed. Mom always came home with a gun or a wooden board or a bag of canned food.”

“She expected this?” Clarke asks.

Bellamy snorts. “Not zombies specifically. She just thought the world was going to get fucked up soon enough and didn't trust anyone to help her through it when it happened."

"She was right, though. Wasn't she?"

Bellamy takes his hand away then, as if he suddenly remembers that Clarke is still touching him. "It doesn't matter. All her preparation didn't save her from being attacked by a walker nest before I even found out about the outbreak. It didn't stop her from coming home infected." His eyes close. Clarke's stomach churns.

"Nine days. She was locked in her room for nine days. Then she started ripping her door apart. I couldn't let her get to Octavia. So when she got out... I shot her."

Clarke's sharp intake of breath is drowned out by Bellamy's short, harsh sob.

"If there's a cure, Clarke," he says later, when the sun is just starting to peek through the gaps in the boarded windows, "it means I killed my own mother for nothing."


	4. Welcome to the New Age

Bellamy seems determined to pretend that the conversation about his mother never happened. Clarke can't help but notice the way he won't look her in the eye and only speaks to Octavia. He moves around the house that morning, all nervous energy, while Octavia cooks a bit of rabbit to get them started on their trek.

"Sit down, Bell," she says. "Here. Eat something." She holds out a piece meat to her brother then offers some to Clarke.

Clarke accepts it, chewing slowly. She's anxious to get out and start walking again. She has a feeling, though, that the Blake's aren't exactly ready to leave. After what Bellamy told her about this house, Clarke isn't surprised.

Still, it isn't too long before they're out in the woods, the small house lost in the trees behind them. There is still morning dew over the underbrush. Occasionally a bird calls to its mate. Bellamy takes up the lead position, hand on his gun, Octavia next to him and Clarke a few steps behind.

After a while Clarke can hear the siblings talking in low voices, heads titled in toward each other.

"What are we going to do in Virginia, O?" Bellamy asks. "We don't have anything there."

"We don't have anything here," Octavia says, "And if Clarke's right about a cure..." She trails off. It's a moment before she speaks again. "It would just be nice to be a part of something. To have a reason to get up and fight every day."

It almost makes Clarke feel guilty to eavesdrop on the conversation. She can't help but admire Octavia, though, and Bellamy when he silently nods his agreement. The fact that they're willing to leave the only home they've known for a chance to be part of something important - well, it's nothing that Clarke would ever have the courage to do.

No, Clarke tells herself, her story might not be exactly the same as the Blake's, but there was no lack of bravery in her decision to pack up and follow her mother to Virginia. She probably could have stayed in her house and lived for a year, maybe longer, before she would have had to venture out and join this new world.

Although, if Clarke didn't know better she would think nothing has changed. Walking through the forest with the Blake's she could imagine that they're simply on a day hike. Except she did know better. She's known Bellamy and Octavia for a matter of weeks and the weight of the gun in the waistband of her dirty jeans reminds her that this isn't entertainment and that at any minute they could be fighting for their lives.

The guns and the walkers aren’t the only proof that Clarke’s world has changed. The simple fact that she’s around Bellamy and Octavia in the first place is enough of a difference from her old life that Clarke would never be able to forget about it. She thinks of her mother, of the way that she would cringe if she knew that Clarke had been staying at the home of a dead drug addict and her two illegitimate children. The thought gives Clarke a thrill that she used to get when she disobeyed her mother in order to do something that sounded both fun and dangerous at the same time.

“Clarke,” Bellamy says, interrupting her thoughts before she could fall too deeply into them. His voice is low and tense. “Clarke, come here.”

Clarke realizes then how far behind she fell. She carefully makes her way to Bellamy and Octavia, her senses on high alert for whatever it was that triggered the sudden stop. She gives Bellamy a curious look and he shakes his head, motioning with his elbow to his right. There’s a tangle of bushes and tree branches that blocks the view, but now Clarke can hear footsteps. Footsteps that are much louder than the quiet rustlings of innocent woodland creatures.

Octavia takes off toward the sound. Bellamy swears under his breath and follows her, hissing, “O, don’t be stupid.”

Octavia doesn't listen to him. She walks along the wall of bushes for a moment before finding a weak spot. She shoves her hands in, pulling apart branches so that she can peak through.

"Bell," she whispers. "Those are real people."

"What?" Both Bellamy and Clarke crowd around Octavia, trying to peek through the branches.

There are five people. Real, human, alive. Even from a distance Clarke can see that they're dirty and tired, but they seem to be in good spirits, all things considered. One of them even laughs.

"Come on," Octavia says. She starts off again, looking for a break in the bushes as she goes. Bellamy swears under his breath and follows his sister, and Clarke trails behind warily.

Clarke can hear Bellamy trying to talk some reason into Octavia, but his sister makes it clear that she doesn't care what he has to say about the topic. Clarke wonders how many strangers Octavia has actually ever met. For a girl to be this excited about a random group of kids during the apocalypse... well, it's pretty heartbreaking.

Still, Clarke is excited as well, even though she knows it might not be a good thing. Most people she's come across since leaving her house have been alone. It's the groups that she met that were scary; mean and violent and unforgiving when you accidentally steal their food. This new group could be just like that.

Octavia bursts through a break in the bushes. Bellamy yells something at her and Clarke tries to grab her before any of them get shot. There's a shot from a gun, but no scream, so Clarke assumes it missed its target.

"Guys, they're alive." The comment comes from a thin, dark-skinned girl, calm and almost amused. The rest of her party lowers their guns. One boy, shaggy-haired and wide-eyed, looks openly apologetic. He mumbles something that Clarke doesn't quite catch.

"Dammit, Octavia," Bellamy says as he shoves his way past Clarke to the head of their small group, "Sorry about that." He addresses the girl that had spoken. "My sister doesn't have the best manners."

"That's what happens when you live in a box your whole life," Octavia mumbles.

The girl shoots a look at Octavia, then looks back at Bellamy. "Glad no one was hurt. Anyone else with you?"

Clarke steps forward. "It's just us three."

The girl nods, her expression hard to read. "Well, you're welcome to join us. That's Monroe, Harper, Jasper, and Monty. I'm Raven."

"Clarke," Clarke introduces herself with a handshake. "This is Bellamy, and Octavia."

Raven nods to each of them. "Where you headed?"

Bellamy and Octavia both turn their heads toward Clarke expectantly. “The University of Virginia,” she supplies.

“She thinks they might have a cure!” Both Bellamy and Clarke look sharply at Octavia for her outburst. The damage is done, though, and they have everyone’s attention.

“There is no cure,” says one of the other girls – Harper. She’s all hard eyes and bony arms holding a gun that looks heavier than she does.

There’s a moment in which Clarke can feel all eyes on her. She doesn’t want to explain – it’s too complicated and these strangers wouldn’t understand. She’s not even sure Bellamy and Octavia would understand. She has a feeling, though, that if she didn’t start explaining soon than she might have a gun or two pointed at her own head.

Bellamy steps in. “It’s a rumor, but’s it’s all we’ve got.”

Raven’s eyes flick to his. “Would you like some company?”


	5. Radioactive

Traveling in a post-apocalyptic forest with eight people while trying to avoid man-eating monsters is not the easiest of tasks. Clarke finds herself in the midst of petty and not-so-petty arguments over the next few days, trying to resolve them in a manner that doesn’t involve violence, which is what seems to be the go-to solution for most of the new group.

Bellamy’s usually the one that ends up finishing the fights. He’s taken to leading in the most natural way – Clarke can’t help but be impressed. Everyone listens to him when he talks. He barks out orders like he owns the whole damn world and people follow them. It’s a little intimidating but mostly awe-inspiring. Clarke catches herself staring sometimes as Bellamy talks Jasper through skinning a squirrel or shows Monroe how to clean her gun faster than she knew how to before.

Sometimes he’ll catch her eye, and the lines in his forehead will smooth out. It’s not a smile, but Clarke thinks it’s about as close as he gets. She only sees him smile at Octavia. Somehow it’s become a goal of hers to get him to smile at her.

They reach a city after a few days and decide to split up in search of supplies. Monty joins Clarke and the Blakes and they head for a big chain store while the others weave through the abandoned houses, planning to meet up again at sundown.

She won’t ever get get used to abandoned, ransacked buildings, Clarke thinks. Stores are the worst, with their concrete walls and empty shelves. She keeps her nose covered with her shirt so the rotten smell can’t mess with her stomach as she paces the aisles. The chances that she’ll find something useful are slim, but she has to check.

There’s a can of something in the back of a shelf, so she reaches for it and drops it in her backpack without checking the label. Anything in a can lasts for years and she’s not in the best position to be a picky eater.

A crash the next aisle over has her aiming her gun in front of her before she can even process what happened.

“Dammit,” Bellamy swears.

Clarke turns the corner, gun still up, to find Bellamy plucking a bit of glass from his pantleg, a broken jar at his feet. She lowers her gun. “What happened? Are you okay?”

Bellamy shoots her an unimpressed look. “I was reaching for this,” he holds up a can with a faded label, “And knocked the jar–”

Octavia’s voice is loud, a high note of panic ringing through the empty building. “Bell!”

He starts toward his sister without a second of hesitation and Clarke follows. They pass a section of furniture into what used to be the hardware department and the unmistakable sounds of the undead reach their ears. Monty yells at Octavia to watch out and Clarke sees a walker dive for the girl before Monty finishes it off with a wrench.

There are more, though, coming at them in a group of ten, probably, it’s hard to count when they seem to blur together. Clarke tries to take a quick inventory of their surroundings – it looks like Monty grabbed the only pseudo-weapon in the area. She takes her knife from her boot and steels herself, feeling like the second goes by in slow motion.

Then everything happens at once, as it usually does, and it’s almost hard to keep track of the dead and the living. Walkers screech. Octavia gives a shout of success before the sickening crunch of a zombie hitting the floor. Bellamy gets two with a well-aimed throw of his knife then turns and offs another with the butt of his hammer. Clarke retrieves her knife from one just as another makes a lunge for her, jaw open and arms outstretched. She stumbles, kicks out at the body and it catches her leg. She’s fumbling for her gun, dropped just out of her reach, as a shot goes off and the walker falls onto her, limp.

“Ugh,” she curses and shoves the walker off her, grabs her gun and stands. A sharp pain burns up her leg.

“Are you okay?” Clarke blinks. Bellamy’s face comes into focus. Behind her, a zombie wails with a death blow. There’s a split second of eerie silence before Clarke processes what happened.

“It got my leg. Just its nails, I think.” She pulls her pant leg up to check on the wound. There are two gashes across her calf but they’re distinctly not teeth marks, so she deems it a win. When she looks back up at him, Bellamy’s eyes are locked on her leg. “Thanks for saving me.”

His gaze lifts to her face. “Anytime. You should get that bandaged.”

He sits with her while Monty and Octavia continue to search for supplies, confident in their relative safety because any zombie in the area would have been attracted to the bloodbath before. Clarke wraps her leg and tucks the end of her pants into her boot, securing the bandage as best as she can.

“I saw you get those two walkers at once,” she says as she cleans her knife. “You know, you don’t have to show off when we’re literally fighting for our lives.”

To her surprise that gets a reaction out of him. It’s not quite a laugh, more of a quick release of air through his nostrils, but it’s still satisfying. “I’ll take whatever I can get, Princess.” Clarke smiles.

\---

When the rest of their group finds them that evening they look to be a little worse for wear.

“Caught a nest in an old school,” Raven says before anyone can ask. “No one was bit but Harper took a bad hit to the head.” She collapses onto the porch swing of the house they stopped at for the night. 

Monty goes to check on Harper, frowning. “We found some too. Clarke’s leg took the worst of it.”

“And my shirt,” Clarke mumbles. She’d given up on trying to ignore the gore on her clothes and had since stolen new clothes from the house. “Bellamy had to play action hero and I got zombie guts all over me.”

“In my defense, the zombie was basically all guts anyway.” Bellamy doesn’t even look up from his gun. Clarke thinks she hears a hint of a smile in his voice, but when she looks at him his forehead is creased in concentration.

“Monty found a wrench,” Octavia pipes up, and the conversation turns to more heroics. Clarke watches Bellamy, though, wondering again if he was born this unhappy or if his personality is a product of his environment. She finds herself hoping that it’s the latter.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr at nomsyy.


End file.
